Behind the Plate with Heather Soman, RD

Emotional Eating Isn’t the Problem — Here’s What Is

• Heather Soman, RD • Episode 9

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Shame says emotional eating is a flaw; we say it’s a signal. Heather Soman, registered dietitian and certified intuitive eating counselor, explores why turning to food during big feelings is both human and understandable—and how to respond with compassion while adding better tools. 


We unpack how childhood patterns, cultural scripts, and media moments shape comfort eating, from cookies after hard days to the classic breakup-and-ice-cream trope. 


Along the way, Heather shares reflective prompts to build an emotional vocabulary, spot body cues like tight chests or restless energy, and identify the unmet needs beneath cravings.

We dig into common scenarios where food becomes the go-to: long days that end with snacks and streaming, or ADHD brains chasing stimulation with screen-stacking and grazing. 


Instead of moralizing food, we explore what those moments are asking for—rest, boundaries, connection, novelty, or creative engagement—and how to meet those needs with a broader toolkit. 

If emotional eating feels like your only coping strategy, Heather offers gentle next steps, including therapy support, reflection questions, and resources to reconnect with hunger, fullness, and satisfaction cues.

If this resonated, subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so others can find the show. Want more tools? Check the show notes for the Empowered Eating Journey, our free hunger and fullness guide, and the weekly newsletter.

Learn more at behindtheplate.ca

Grab the free Hunger & Fullness Cues Guide: behindtheplate.ca/hunger-fullness-cues

Explore The Empowered Eating Journey: behindtheplate.ca/empowered-eating-journey

SPEAKER_00:

Hello everyone and welcome back. Today we're talking about something that, in my opinion, impacts more people than not, and that many people struggle with often quietly because they don't want to talk about it, and that's emotional eating. As a registered dietitian, I have heard many people feel guilt and shame around emotional eating. A lot of people describe this as almost a character flaw in themselves. And I'm here today to switch that narrative, to break down what emotional eating is and how to manage it. Some of the topics discussed today may be emotionally triggering, so make sure to take care of yourself in a way that suits you if you're finding that some of this content is difficult. Hey friends, and welcome to Behind the Plate, a podcast designed to help you eat with more clarity, confidence, and compassion, especially if ADHD, binge eating, or burnout is part of your story. I'm Heather Somman, a registered dietitian and certified intuitive eating counselor. This podcast is where we ditch food guilt, question diet culture, and learn how to nourish our brains and bodies in the way that nature intended. So let's get into it. One of the things myself and a lot of dietitians that I hear say about food is that food is more than just fuel. And it is such an important message because when you think about it, it's comfort, it's celebration, it's connection, nostalgia, culture, memory. It's so many different things. There's been so many times where I've been meeting with clients where they get emotional during sessions and they can't believe that they're getting emotional talking to a dietitian and they go, wow, I can't believe I'm crying. This is just a nutrition session. And I always tell people, it's so much deeper than that. And not that this is therapy by any means, but it's because food and our relationship with food can hold so many different things where again it can be things like comfort. And there's a lot of emotion that's tied to our eating. For example, think back to your childhood for a moment. Was food used as a reward? Was it used to soothe sadness or disappointment or things like big emotions? Maybe it was part of every birthday or holiday or special moment. Maybe it was tied to affection, like a parent baking cookies when you had a bad day. It's never been about just food. So of course, food makes us feel good naturally. It's wired into our history, our family stories, and our emotional experiences. And it even impacts things like our brain chemistry. Like it can make us have some of those really good feelings, especially when we're experiencing a food that brings back some nostalgia and some of those feelings of comfort that were wired into our brain at a very early age. And now also think about how food was portrayed in things like TV shows and movies growing up. I often talk about my experience growing up as a millennial and some of the things that I saw on TV. And I know I saw emotional eating happen quite a bit in TV shows. And I actually remember the first time I went through a breakup when I was really young. It was one of those like really short, kind of silly elementary school relationships. But the first time I went through a breakup, I got a pint of ice cream and I ate a whole bunch of it, which now as an adult, I can say that I did that because that's what I saw on TV. That's what I saw you're supposed to do when you go through a breakup. And I think it's funny how as kids we kind of mimic some of the things we see on TV, but from an early age, that's sort of something that we're taught. You know, you have that image almost of somebody like kind of like crying over a pint of ice cream or insert food here, whatever makes sense. So yeah, it's absolutely normal to eat when we have emotions. It makes sense. Food tastes good, food makes us feel good. And yes, you have complete permission to eat food whenever you choose to. But if you're noticing emotional eating feels overwhelming, confusing, or like it's your only coping strategy, then it might be worth exploring with curiosity and not judgment. Something I like to do with a lot of the clients I work with is pose some reflection questions. So if you're somebody who likes to do any type of reflective journaling, feel free to take some of these questions and write them down in your notes or your journal. And I'll I'll put them in the show notes as well in case you want to reflect back on these. My first question is Was food used as a reward or comfort in your home growing up? What memories come to mind? What positive memories from childhood involve food? When was the last time you emotionally ate and what triggered it? If you like this kind of work, my empowered eating journey is equipped with many different reflection questions on many different topics around food. I have an entire chapter on just emotional eating and a bunch more reflection questions like this. To answer one for me, when I think about some of the positive memories uh from childhood that involve food, I think about one specifically. Whenever we would go to the dentist, it would be my mom taking my brother and I to the dentist. And every time we would go to the dentist right afterwards, we would go to Baskin Robbins and get an ice cream. And it wasn't until my mid-20s that I realized that every time I saw the dentist, I was craving ice cream afterwards. And it's because I developed that emotional association with it. The dentist was not a fun thing. It's something that even to this day gives me a lot of anxiety. And it makes me think of ice cream. And I think that's totally okay. I don't think it's a flaw in parenting by any means. It's just interesting how we sometimes associate some types of situations or emotions with food. Okay, so let's zoom out for a moment. Emotional eating often happens because we may not have been taught very much emotional awareness. I mean, I know I certainly wasn't growing up, and it's taken a lot of work to really understand emotions. And I think as adults, we we do this work a little bit more. We weren't given an emotional vocabulary. We weren't shown how to identify needs in our bodies and our minds, and we weren't taught coping skills. One tool I love is to simply name your emotions using like a feelings wheel, for example. A lot of like therapists will use this as a tool to help people build vocabulary for their emotions, and to even just check in with your body to notice different sensations. So it might be about asking where you're feeling that emotion, or even if you can't name an emotion, maybe you're just feeling something in your body. It might be like a tightness in your chest. I know for me, when I'm feeling anxious, it feels like I have butterflies in my stomach. You might be feeling restless or some type of fatigue, maybe some tension in your jaw you might notice. Your body often identifies the emotion before your mind catches up. So a couple other reflection questions to consider here are what coping strategies do you currently have? What needs have been going unmet for you lately? And when you're stressed, how do you typically respond? Do you use food or even exercise to cope with emotions? And if you emotionally eat, in what ways did it help you? Has it brought comfort, distraction, grounding? Because none of those are bad things at all. And I think that's what I really want to break down is some of this narrative around the good and bad around food and eating. Because I think diet culture really tells us that we should only be eating for fuel and that if you're emotionally eating, it's a bad thing and you've lost control over your eating. And really, I think if if eating served as a coping strategy for you, and it still does, I think that's completely valid. I think though, what I always get clients to consider is what other coping strategies do they have to deal with some of these really tough emotions? Because when you think about it, as people, we don't like to feel negative emotions, right? We want to do something about it. We want to distract ourselves, we want to kind of run away from it. This is very similar to some of the conversations around body image that I have. But when I think about our emotions, for example, sometimes when I'm feeling really anxious, I've noticed that I will pick up my phone and just start scrolling and I'll try to watch like some funny dog videos or something to try to distract myself. And sure, that's certainly a coping strategy as well. But if you can just stop thinking about it in the way of this is a bad behavior that I'm doing because I'm eating, because I'm eating too much, whatever it might be, just maybe think about it in the sense of from a judgment-free standpoint, oh, this is something that I'm doing to cope with these emotions. And even just recognizing it can be a really great beginning to start making some changes. And it doesn't mean that we're never going to emotionally eat. It just means we're gonna start identifying what's going on and you might start noticing some patterns by doing that. Emotions, by the way, are not random. They are messengers. Strong emotions almost always point to a need that isn't being met. This isn't always the case, but it certainly can be for them for a lot of people. And because most of us were never taught to identify what those needs are, we turn to something that reliably soothes us, which is food. I mean, too, food is also a pretty easy coping strategy as opposed to doing something like meditating or deep breathing or going for a walk or calling a friend. Food feels a lot more easy and accessible than some of those other things, especially when we're feeling some big emotions. Food is not, again, inherently the problem here. It's it can be an issue when it's the only tool we have. And I think that's when a lot of people start to feel out of control with it. Let me give you a couple examples here of some common emotions and the needs that they might be pointing towards. So, what I hear from a lot of people in my practice is the need for rest and relaxation that goes unmet because of the world that we live in. It's so busy. A lot of people are so overworked, their schedules are so busy. And so, some of the emotions that can come with that are things like exhaustion, stress, overwhelm. The need there is rest, quiet time, maybe, some boundaries. Um, all of these things can can really impact some of those emotions. And what that might end up looking like for some people, and again, I've seen this a lot in my practice, is some people will unwind with food at night. So, you know, having chips with your Netflix or having like a sweet treat after the kids go to bed, you know, something like that as your way to almost kind of like quote unquote reward yourself or aid in that sort of rest. And again, I think it's a valid coping strategy. I think a lot of people get concerned when they find that this is what they're doing every single night. And what I often get to the bottom of with a lot of people is is it actually meeting that need for you? And a lot of people realize no, it's it's actually not. So it might be about how can we actually get to the bottom of what the need is and how can we sort of carve out some time to make sure that that need is met. Another example, I see this a lot for folks who are neurodivergent. A lot of my ADHD clients will eat out of searching for things like stimulation. So the emotion that might be there would be boredom or it could be something like lack of pleasure. And then the need is the need for fun, stimulation, creativity, perhaps, or some type of excitement. And so an emotional eating example would be snacking for entertainment or stimulation. For many people with ADHD, oftentimes we are searching for multiple sources of stimulation at once, which is why if you have ADHD, you might have noticed yourself you've got the TV on, you've also got uh like big screen, little screen, and a snack going at the same time, and you've got multiple sources of stimulation happening at once. I know this is a very common experience for many people. And again, it might just be hold on, what do I actually need here? Am I eating because it's stimulating my brain? Do I need to be doing something like fiddling with a fidget toy, or maybe it's, I don't know, crocheting or knitting, or whatever you could do with your hands that might also serve that same purpose. Again, the goal here isn't to eat less food per se, but it is something worth noticing because I mean, I think if we're having a whole bag of chips every single day, that's not necessarily serving us from like a health standpoint. And really, are you truly enjoying the food at that point when you've got big screen, little screen, maybe even a medium screen too, and the food? Again, it's kind of just about asking what's happening kind of like behind, like what's the purpose of what we're doing here. Again, none of this emotional eating is bad, it just means there's a lot more going on underneath the surface. So, what can we do instead? Rather than seeing emotional eating as a failure, as diet culture likes to make us think it is, we can see it as a source of information. It can be a clue or like a signal that our body's giving us that's kind of asking you to check in with yourself. So here's a simple practice that I have a lot of people do. Pause even for just five seconds and ask yourself before you're going to go grab a snack. Because oftentimes we do this a little impulsively, right? It's like we're walking through the kitchen, we just finished dinner, whatever, and like we just grab, insert snack here, like whatever it might be. So instead of doing that, just pause and go, what am I feeling right now? And then ask, what do I really need? And sometimes you really just need a cookie or three, and and that's fine. Sometimes that is serving that need. But if you can get honest with yourself and see if there's something a little bit deeper there that you need, it can actually help you because maybe you need something like comfort or rest or connection or support. I know for a lot of us in this kind of digital world that we live in, people are feeling more alone than ever. And so searching for things like connection and support can be difficult. And again, food can sometimes offer us that a lot quicker and a lot easier. Maybe food helps, but maybe there's also, again, a deeper need that's sort of waiting to be met. If you do emotionally eat, which you will because you're a human and that's okay. We all eat out of emotions, offer yourself compassion rather than guilt. Use the moment as insight, not evidence for failure, which I think a lot of people often do. And if emotionally eating feels like the only tool in your toolbox, that doesn't mean that something's wrong with you. It simply means that more tools can be added. So working with a therapist can be a really helpful support here. I know a lot of therapists do wonderful work around helping give people some of the skills that they need to deal with some of these emotions and can also really help people build some language around emotions too. So, in summary, emotional eating is not the enemy. Your emotions are also not the enemy. Your needs are also not the enemy. Although this may all feel quite inconvenient, when we understand the why behind emotional eating, we can meet ourselves with more compassion, more awareness, and more options. Thank you for being here today. I hope that you have found this helpful. Feel free to save this episode or share it with someone who might need to hear it, or journal through some of the reflection questions. And as always, take good care of yourself. Oh, by the way, if this conversation resonated with you, stay tuned because next week we're going to be talking all about cravings, why they happen, and really what to do about them. And if you want a little extra guidance in understanding your body's cues or your relationship with food, you can check out my empowered eating journey online where I walk you step by step through reconnecting with hunger, fullness, satisfaction in a practical and compassionate way. I also have a free resource on my website about hunger and fullness cues that can include more practical tips and tools. You can find the link in the show notes along with my newsletter where I share even more tools and reflections each week. Again, thank you so much for listening. And remember, your body is not broken. It's communicating. And the more you listen, the more it learns to trust you back. We'll see you next week.